Before Noah became the protagonist of the Israelite flood story, his original place in Israelite historiography was as the ancient farmer who discovered wine, bringing the world relief from the toil of work caused by God’s cursing the soil.

Noah is best known as the man whom God saved from the flood by telling him to build an ark. Academics would point to the fact that in the ancient Near East, flood stories were common, and just as the Sumerians had Ziusudra and the Assyrians had Utnapishtim or Atrahasis, the Israelites had Noah.[1]

Nevertheless, I would like to suggest that Noah existed as a character that was independent of his association with the flood. The original place of Noah in Israelite historiography still appears in the Torah, if only partially, but it is strongly deemphasized by his (later) position as the hero of the Israelite flood story.

How did Noah Comfort us from
the Toil of the Land?

After Noah is born, Lamech, his father, names him and gives an etymological explanation:

5:28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he begot a son. 5:29 And he called him Noah, saying, “This one will provide us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which Yhwh placed under a curse.”

Lamech believed or hoped that Noah’s birth would comfort them from the toil of working the land. But Noah doesn’t ever seem to deliver on this hope in the biblical narrative. Chazal note this and, to solve the problem, they give Noah credit for the invention of the plow (Gen. Rab. 25:2).

Discovering Wine Arnold Ehrlich (1848-1919) offers a different solution. Noah is the discoverer of wine:

… Now the rest workers have is not really rest unless they can forget their toils. And there is no way to forget one’s toils better than with wine, as it says (Prov 31:7), “Let them drink and forget their poverty, and put their troubles out of mind.” And this is the reason for making Kiddush on wine on Shabbat and Yom Tov, since when a person drinks wine he forgets his toils and his rest is rest… Noah was the first person to plant a vineyard. Therefore, scripture offers a midrash on his name based upon the fruit of the vine, which was (first) planted by his own hands, saying: This one will provide us relief from our work, and give us a rest that brings with it no memory of the toil of our hands.

In Ehrlich’s reading, Lamech’s hope that his son will bring him comfort from toil is fulfilled by Noah’s discovery of wine.

Samuel Löwenstamm, commenting on the naming of Noah in his Encyclopedia Mikra’it entry (נח), makes the same observation:

This statement announces a softening of the curse in Gen 3:17-19. Just as this curse has no connection to the flood, so too does its softening bear no connection [to the flood]… The words, “this one will comfort us…” allude to some action of Noah, perhaps the planting of the vineyard. Until the days of Noah, the land was not producing anything but grain for humanity, which they ate with toil. But Noah was fated to plant a vineyard and bring to the world wine, which gladdens people’s hearts, and comforts them for the suffering they experience after their banishment from the garden of Eden.

Reading the accounts of the naming of Noah and his discovery of wine together, we end up with a self-contained Noah story which has nothing to do with a flood. Instead, it connects to a very different theme in the Torah to which Löwenstamm points, the cursing of the land.

The Cursing of the Land: An Early Theme in Genesis

The theme of the land being cursed comes up two times in the Torah before the naming of Noah.

This one will provide us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which Yhwh placed under a curse.

Going back to the time of the first human, the ground has been cursed. Men are forced to toil to make their bread. Noah’s father is not expecting this to change, since it is the permanent condition of man after eating from the fruit of the forbidden tree, but he does hope that the birth of his son will comfort him from all his toil (עצבון). “He prophesied but did not know what he prophesied (ניבא ולא ידע מה ניבא).” His son ends up discovering wine, a substance with the power to comfort.

Noah’s Direct Connection
to the Cain Story

Noah’s direct connection to the cursing of the ground would be self-evident if it weren’t for the intervening material, and by this I don’t only mean the flood story but also the account of the ten antediluvian generations in chapter 5.

Any careful reader of the stories of Adam and Eve (chs. 2-3), Cain’s murder of Abel, and the account of Cain’s descendants (ch. 4) will note the style of narrative differs significantly from the schematic structure of the ten antediluvian generations from Adam to Noah (ch. 5).

Why Chapters 4 and 5 are Different
Scholars further note how the stories in chapters 2:4-4 make use of Yhwh for God’s name and picture an anthropomorphic deity that interacts face to face with humanity. Thus, this section has been identified as the J text, which begins with its own creation story in chapter 2 and continues from there.[3]

In contrast, chapter 5 begins its description of the ten antediluvian generations with a brief description of the creation of humanity that matches that of chapter 1:

5:1 When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God; 5:2 male and female He created them. And He blessed them…

The two passages share common language and style.

Creating humans in God’s image (צלם אלהים/דמות אלהים)

Male and Female (זכר ונקבה)

God’s name as אלהים

The root ב-ר-א

God blesses them

For these reasons and the unique literary style that focuses on the exact years of life for each character, chapter 5 can be identified as a P text. The text has each father name his firstborn son, with no explanation of the name or embellishment, except when it comes to Noah.

The Verse of Noah’ Birth
The Noah verse (5:29) stands out as different from the rest of the chapter in a number of respects:

This is the only name explained in this chapter. (In the J texts in chapter 4, a number of names are explained, including that of Seth.)

No other name is introduced with “and he called him.” Instead, they all simply say “he begot XXX.” (In the J texts in chapter 4, both Seth and Enosh are introduced with a phrase with the root ק-ר-א, “called.”)

The name of God here is Yhwh. (Compare to verses 1&24.)

The theme of the cursed land (Adam and Cain) is from J.

The term “toil (עצבון)” is used in the curse of Adam (and Eve).

For these reasons, many scholars believe that this verse comes from J and that the original ending of verse 28 was simply “and he begot Noah,” with no further explanation.[4] When the two texts J (ch. 4) and P (ch. 5) were combined, the redactor cut the J genealogies in favor of P’s. (Note that the birth of Enosh and Seth appears in each source and that no extant J text connects Noah to any of the characters in chapter 4.) Nevertheless, having cut the J genealogy, the redactor decided to keep the J verse explaining Noah’s name and add it into the P text.

Introducing Noah: The Man of the Soil

We return now to the discovery of wine story. When read together with the flood story, the opening seems problematic:

ט:כ וַיָּ֥חֶל נֹ֖חַ אִ֣ישׁ הָֽאֲדָמָ֑ה וַיִּטַּ֖ע כָּֽרֶם:

9:20 Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

Does the Torah need to introduce Noah at this point? And what kind of an introduction is this? Noah is not “the man of the soil” but the survivor of the flood and the progenitor of humanity. To be clear, the Torah is not saying that Noah, now that the flood is over, became a tiller of the soil. It says that Noah, who is (and always has been) a tiller of the soil, now began to plant a vineyard. The vineyard is the new element; the tiller of the soil is introduced as background.

Reading this as part of independent storyline, however, the story flows much better. Noah is first introduced upon his naming, with the hope that he will comfort his father (not necessarily Lemach, Noah’s father in P) from his toiling on the cursed ground. In the next episode, Noah the adult is introduced as “the tiller of the soil,” and the story unfolds.

This set up is very much like that of Cain and Abel, in which the protagonists are named, then they are introduced as adults with their occupations (shepherd and farmer), then the action begins.

4:1 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said, “I have created a male child with the help of Yhwh.” 4:2 She then bore his brother Abel. Abel became a keeper of sheep, and Cain became a tiller of the soil. 4:3 In the course of time…

There are thematic parallels between the Adam, Cain, and Noah stories as well. Not only are all three protagonists tillers of the soil, but all three stories end with sin. Another thematic parallel between these early stories is between Noah and the descendants of Cain; they are stories about the invention of some now common human practice:

4:20 Adah bore Yabal; he was the ancestor of those who dwell in tents and amidst herds. 4:21 And the name of his brother was Yubal; he was the ancestor of all who play the lyre and the pipe. 4:22 As for Zillah, she bore Tubal-cain, who forged all implements of copper and iron.

I suggest that Noah, together with Yabal, Yubal, and Tubal-Cain, had his beginning in Israelite historiography as part of a list of ancient inventors similar to the much longer list preserved in the work of Philo of Byblos. In Noah’s case, he was known as the first planter of vineyards and the discoverer of wine. This is how Samuel Löwenstamm makes this connection:

This sounds as if he was the first person to bring about the practice of drinking wine. Noah, therefore, joins the group of ancient inventers, who were the first to lay the foundations for human culture, and whose stories are alluded to in chapter Genesis 4…

The Contours of the Older
(Pre-Flood) Noah Story

Born to a descendent of Adam, who toils in the field like all men and hopes that having a son will bring him some amount of comfort, Noah is the first to plant a vine and to discover how to ferment the grapes on the vine and produce wine. This leads to his (predictable) downfall. Although wine does comfort the troubled soul, too much of it leads to drunkenness, as the Torah will emphasize again in the story of Lot (Gen 19, also J). Noah drinks until intoxicated and rolls around naked in a drunken stupor.

The story ends with one of his sons gazing upon him and telling his brother. Upon awakening, Noah curses this son to be a slave to his brothers for all time.[5] If anything, this reads like a cautionary tale about alcohol, “The Fall of the First Winemaker – Don’t let this happen to you.” Noah drinks too much, becomes intoxicated, and squanders his opportunity for greatness. Thus, before Noah was the survivor of the flood, he was the discoverer of wine.[6] This may be his original place in Israelite historiography.

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Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber is a fellow at Project TABS – TheTorah.com. He holds an M.A. from Hebrew University in Jewish History (biblical period) and a Ph.D. from Emory University in Jewish Religious Cultures. In addition to academic training, Zev holds ordination (yoreh yoreh) and advanced ordination (yadin yadin) from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) Rabbinical School. Zev’s edited volumes on brain death and organ donation areforthcoming from Koren and his book on Joshua in reception history is forthcoming in De Gruyter’s BZAW series.

[5] Canaan, not Ham, seems to be Noah’s son in the original story. See my TABS essay, …., for the reason I make this claim. See also, Tzemah Yoreh’s TABS essay, “Noah’s Four Sons,” who comes to a similar conclusion.

From all this it seems that Noah was originally a Canaanite figure and that he only became the hero of the flood story at a later point, when the Canaanite traditions began to incorporate Sumerian-Mesopotamian traditions into its repertoire…

I thank David Frankel for calling my attention to Löwenstamm’s work after reading an earlier draft of this essay.

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